A review of The Reason for God by Tim Keller

Have you ever heard statements like these?

• “How could there be just one true faith? It’s arrogant to say your religion is superior. . . . Surely all religions are equally good and valid for . . . their particular followers.”
• “I won’t believe in a God who allows suffering.”
• “The Christians I know don’t seem to have the freedom to think for themselves. I believe each individual must determine truth for him- or herself.”
• “There are so many people who are not religious at all who are more kind and even more moral than many of the Christians I know.”
• “I have . . . a problem with the doctrine of hell. The only god that is believable to me is a God of love.”
• “My scientific training makes it difficult if not impossible to accept the teachings of Christianity.”
• “Much of the Bible’s teaching is historically inaccurate.” “My biggest problem with the Bible is that it is culturally obsolete. Much of the Bible’s teaching (for example, about women) is socially regressive.”

How do you respond? Are there good answers to such questions? And once you’ve tried to answer such questions, how do you move the conversation away from these peripheral issues and to the Gospel itself?

Tim Keller has been a pastor in Manhattan for almost twenty years. As he reaches out to unbelievers and hosts Q and A periods after sermons, he hears such statements and questions again and again. In a new book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Keller answers these questions, and then presents Christ as compellingly beautiful and the Gospel as rationally coherent. (more…)